And these are the characters at Greenwich Hospital, who after fighting the battles of their country are honoured with a palace. Oh, it was a proud display of national gratitude to such brave defenders! England has been compared to a huge marine animal, whose ports were its mouths, and whose navy formed its claws. What then is Greenwich but a receptacle for superannuated claws? I dearly love to get amongst them,--nearly two thousand shattered emblems of Britain’s triumphs,--the returned stores of our naval glory. Ay, there they are with their snug little cabins, like turtles under their shells. But let us enter the Painted Wall, formerly the refectory for the pensioners, but now devoted to the commemoration of their gallant achievements. There are the portraits of the heroes of the olden time, whose memorials cannot perish; and there too is old Van Tromp, the Dutchman, who is honoured with a distinguished place amongst the brave of England’s pride. Here the old _blades_ are a _cut_ above the common; the small iron-bound officers who attend on visiters and point out the well-remembered features of commanders long since numbered with the dead. “That ’ere, sir, on your right, is the battle of Trafflygar,” said a short thickset man, apparently between sixty and seventy years of age. His countenance was one of mild benevolence, and yet there was a daring in his look that told at once a tale of unsubdued and noble intrepidity; whilst the deep bronze upon his skin was finely contrasted with the silky white locks that hung straggling on his brow.--“That ’ere, sir, is the battle of Trafflygar, in which I had the honour to be one.” “Were you with Nelson?” inquired I. “I was, your honour,” he replied, “and those were the proudest days of my life. I was with him when he bore up out of the line off Cape St. Vincent, and saved old Jarvis from disgrace. I was one of the boarders, too, when we took the Saint Joseph,--there’s the picture, there in the middle of the hall;--and I was with him in that ship there,--the Victory,--though it arn’t a bit like her,--and stationed on the quarter-deck at Trafflygar.” This was spoken with such an air of triumph, that the old man’s features were lighted up with animation; it called to his remembrance scenes in which he had shared the glory of the day and saved his country. His eye sparkled with delight, as if he again saw the British ensign floating in the breeze as the proud signal for conquest; or was labouring at the oar with his darling chief, like a tutelar deity of old, guiding the boat through the yielding element, and leading on to some daring and desperate enterprise. “I don’t like the picture,” said I; “the perspective is bad, and the ship is too long and flat; besides the colour is unnatural.”